Tag: unschooling

who we are | contemplating gender identity + expression

who we are,

how we embody + express

all of our identities —

namely, gender + culture —

and how we respect + support the wholeness of others in embodying + expressing their multitudes is an ongoing contemplation in our home.

Last month, we discovered Who Are You?: The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity by Brook Pessin-Whedbee and discussed the gender spectrum and the many ways to be a “boy”/”girl”/”kid”…PERSON!
While my little person was still nesting in the womb, I held a blessing ceremony and invited all who were present to speak love, life and possibility over my child. my own prayer was for my soon-to-be human-baby-person to have a compassionate soul.

Parenting with a heart for justice, liberation and healing compels me to ensure that this compassionate soul cultivates a “liberating lexicon” rooted in the skillful understanding that we have the power to name ourselves and we will continue to resist the oppressive forces that tell us otherwise.

° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °

📷 #2: kiddo’s self-understanding + expression:

i have a body that made adults guess “boy.”

i am a boy.

i like building, drawing, games. 

📷 #3: mommy’s self-understanding + expression:

i have a body that made adults guess “girl.”

i am a girl.

i like reading. 

📷 #4: two of the places we descend from…opening up the conversation around how we express culture and ethnicity. specifically, how does a brownskinned, black-identified, multi-cultured, multi-ethnic, multi-racial child express/embody their “white” part? (#howsway)  my child’s answer was all levels of woke: he basically named a certain dangerous political character and his behaviors, indicating my son’s awareness of how toxic “white pride” is expressed. 

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converging histories | stevie wonder

When a story on the legendary Stevie Wonder converges into a history lesson on music, our homestate of Michigan and our amazing “Auntie B” (the talented Teal Marchande) who interviewed Stevie when she was in high school!

  • 📚: Little Stevie Wonder by Quincy Troupe
  • 🎧: Songs in the Key of Life (vol. 1 + 2)
    Stevie Wonder — Song Review
  • 💻: Showed him videos for “Isn’t She Lovely, Happy Birthday (for MLK Jr.), Ebony + Ivory (because Paul McCartney’s Blackbird is one of his favorite bedtime songs), two of my all-time faves As + All I Do, and the episode of Carpool Karaoke with Stevie!

children’s social justice reading group|civil protest

Oh, just learning about Civil Protest this morning:

The kiddo helped us check kids in, then later helped me lead the small discussion circle. And he came up with the words Fight For Justice for his protest sign all on his own!

📚: ¡Si, Se Puede/Yes, We Can: Janitor Strike in L.A.! by Diana Cohn

📚: Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up By Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkey

🎞: Andrea + Brian Pinkey Introduce “Sit-In” 

mellowed-out mondays

tear down the walls and cast away chairs…let the world become your classroom! happy monday, y’all!

On “Guerrilla Learning” ~ Grace Llewellyn & Amy Silver

Guerrilla Learning is coloring outside the lines, finding the shortest direction between two points, moving directly toward goals, doing the best you can with what you’ve got to work with now, making what you want for your kids and what they want for themselves as real as you can, asking people for specific kinds of help, getting out of theory land and into the trenches, realizing that schools could take centuries to significantly improve (or to get out of the way altogether) and that meanwhile your children are barreling through childhood…

Cover of "Guerrilla Learning: How to Give...In a nutshell, Guerrilla Learning means taking responsibility for your own education.And Guerrilla Learning is relaxing—knowing that you’ve made a lot of mistakes as a parent (and an educator) and that you’ll make a lot more, and that that’s okay—your kids are resilient; it’s not all up to you, and life will provide.

For young people, that includes thinking clearly and seriously about one’s own goals, interests, and values—then acting accordingly.

For parents, it means supporting your child in doing so.

It might mean giving your child a kind of freedom that may seem risky or even crazy at first.

And it also means continuing your own involvement in the world of ideas and culture, continuing to read, to think, to discuss, and to create––and being a walking, talking invitation to your kids to do the same.

Of Related Interest:

Raising Smart Girls Blog

An Unschooling Life

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